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In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power S01E03 "Adar", Galadriel and Halbrand get rescued at sea by Elendil and his crew, whereafter they travel to the island kingdom of Númenor. While entering Númenor by ship, and in the Númenor palace grounds and prison, several statues are shown, presumably depicting important figures in Númenorean history.

Who are depicted in the statues?

Screencaps of the statues:

screencap of the statue Screencap of the same statue in the two preceding screencaps, at nighttime (from S01E05)

Statue in the Númenor prison, near Halbrand's prison cell:
screencap of the statue

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    Characters to be named later. I'm not sure there are any (additional) named Numenoreans available in the licensed works to apply to the statures. (In-universe, pick your favorite nobles from Unfinished Tales's "Line of Elros".)
    – chepner
    Sep 12, 2022 at 12:59
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    @chepner LOL :) But don't they have Appendices rights? Think there's a (less detailed) line there (hence they can use Tar-Miriel?)
    – AKA
    Sep 12, 2022 at 14:29
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    Could be the Valar. One looks like Ulmo.
    – WOPR
    Sep 12, 2022 at 15:45
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    Númenóreans shows their empty right palm for peace (cf. Halbarad), and their left palm for warning, especially while grabbing a weapon with their right hand (cf. Argonath). The statue with a sword is grabbing the sword while seemingly waving backwards with his left hand, kind of looks like a challenge.
    – Eugene
    Sep 13, 2022 at 6:21
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    @DavidRoberts True, but that's pretty much all we know about human gestures. It may as well be the Elven gesture of recipient (either palm upwards), or welcome (palm backwards).
    – Eugene
    Sep 15, 2022 at 12:09

3 Answers 3

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The statue in the prison cell is most likely Uinen, which page incidentally tells us

Two explanations exist for the name Uinen. In The Etymologies, the first element came from a root UY-. Several other words under this lemma mean "seaweed", though the name Uinen itself is not explained.

and we see seaweed sculpted in her hair. In the published Silmarillion we also have that her

hair lies spread through all waters under sky

and the statue's hair is very long, going all the way to the water.

The big statue with outstretched hand is Eärendil, with the silmaril on his brow, and the bird just by his right shoulder is representative of Elwing when she was turned into a bird. And the hand gesture is in fact consistent with the Elvish welcome gesture described in Nature of Middle-earth, while the Argonath statues are giving the sign of warning and rejection.


Edit: The showrunners confirmed in the official show podcast (Ep 3) that it was indeed Uinen in the prison, confirmed again that it was Eärendil with the Silmaril and Elwing in the harbour. And, incidentally, that the small bust statue next to Elendil in Ep 3 when he is talking with Galadriel is the Valier Nienna:

Lloyd Owen playing Elendil, standing next to a recessed bust in the wall, partly covered by a creeper

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  • Incidentally, there is a wall feature in the Númenor set similar to the Nienna one that I spotted in some behind-the-scenes footage that I suspect is her brother Námo/Mandos Sep 21, 2023 at 8:04
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The statue with water coming out of his hand is Ulmo.

In his left hand you can see his horn, which he blew when he appeared to Tuor, father of Earendil.

“And thereupon Ulmo lifted up a mighty horn, and blew upon it a single great note, to which the roaring of the storm was but a windflaw upon a lake.”

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Wayne Yip, The Rings of Power season 1 episodes 3, 4, 5, and 8 director, described some of the statues in an interview on the Nerd of the Rings YouTube channel:

The Kingstones (past Númenorean kings)

Ulmo

Eärendil

Screencap of the same statue in the two preceding screencaps, at nighttime (from S01E05)

Nerd of the Rings: [...] the Eärendil statue kind of gives you a sense of scale. You see it as the boat comes in but then it's also in the wide shots so you got a point of reference with the wider shots there.

Yip: Yeah and also the kind of sense of how big the head at the beginning, one of the Kingstones at the beginning that was big, the Fountain of Ulmo that was pretty big [...] you think that was big. And then we had that beautiful moment where it looked as if the ship carrying Galadriel was coming into, sailing into his hands as if he was welcoming back the elves onto the island.

Yip: Ulmo was the god that gifted them the island so we knew that he was going to be upfront and center, welcoming them, welcoming visitors to the island. There's a certain pride as well and we imagine in the Númenorean spirit that you could see it when Elendil says "home" that he absolutely loves his island that he probably absolutely loves, he just knows how awesome it is sailing into Armenelos and I don't think he gets over how beautiful that entry is.

Yip: [...] Eärendil and then Elwing on his shoulder. [...] And then at night I don't know whether you ever see it specifically but we had it so that at night from the wharf looking up he looks like he's kind of pointing up to his star.

[...]

So it all kind of lines up and then you know so there's one of those things where we kind of felt like because it was all these different bridges that they would have built the statue in a way that you could enjoy different aspects of it depending on which bridge you were standing on and what time of day.

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  • Wayne also mentioned a statue of Yavanna opposite Ulmo's, which is not on-screen, so I guess that was in concept art only. It would be cool to see that. Oct 1, 2022 at 10:40

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